


Moments

by ebbj9891



Series: In Quest Of Something [60]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, M/M, Overdosing, POV Brian Kinney, Post-Series, Recreational Drug Use, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 03:26:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1413310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebbj9891/pseuds/ebbj9891
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There are certain moments that have stuck with me, no matter how hard I try to shake them. Moments that are clearer than the rest, moments that have wormed their way into the recesses of my mind, moments that come rushing back without any warning, moments that barrel full-speed into my chest, crushing me, crippling me."</p><p>Justin overdoses and Brian is forced to watch helplessly as yet another nightmare unfolds before his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moments

There are certain moments that have stuck with me, no matter how hard I try to shake them.

Moments that are clearer than the rest, moments that have wormed their way into the recesses of my mind, moments that come rushing back without any warning, moments that barrell full-speed into my chest, crushing me, crippling me.

When he took the bat to the head. The whistle of the bat, the way it cracked against his skull. My last glimpse of him before everything went to hell. The sound of him falling. I wasn't there to catch him.

When I saw him emerging from the fray at Babylon. Blood and dirt all over him, the stench of smoke and death in the air. At least he was still standing. At least he was, relatively speaking, okay.

They wake me up, they rouse me during quiet moments, they fester inside of me waiting to strike. I am so fucking terrified of losing him. I've tried telling him, and maybe (just maybe) he has some idea, but I wonder if anybody could ever understand how deep that fear runs.

It comes to life again at The Stonewall, one night in August. The city is fucking blistering, scorching day and night. We're dancing, shirtless, and I'm incredibly fucking tempted to go pantsless too in this heat. Justin wouldn't mind; in fact, I think he'd even encourage it.

He turns in my arms, pressing his slick back to my chest, grinding. I kiss his ear, his jaw, his neck. Slide the pills out of my front pocket and palm two of them. One falls to the floor. Fuck. There's time to buy another. I tilt Justin's head backwards, he opens his mouth for me. I slide the pill onto his tongue. He sucks my finger into his mouth and fellates it, smiling a bit. I laugh in his ear and whisper, "You fucking tease."

He grabs my hand, holds it to his chest, swallows the pill. I kiss him. "I'm going to buy another. I have my limits, and one is I'm not ingesting a pill that's been lying on a club floor."

"How very _gauche_ that would be," he grins. I kiss him again and scan the club; the dealer catches my eye and nods towards the bathrooms. "Don't take too long, I've been waiting to dance with you all week."

"Yes, _darling_ , light of my life," I drawl, and he flips me off. I waggle my tongue at him, turn my back, and ease through the sticky masses.

That one little replacement pill empties my wallet, but it's worth it for the mind-blowing fuck Justin and I have been building up to all night. All week, really. He's been slaving at the gallery and my clients have had me by the balls, giving us no room to breathe, and even less to fuck. The dealer watches me with hard eyes as I hand him the cash. He counts it twice and then hands over the product. Nodding at him, I tuck the bag into my pocket and head back out. I'll hand it to Justin and have him feed it to me. I'll suck on his fingers and see how much he likes that; whether he can take that kind of teasing torment. The sly little shit.

The floor is thick with men: dancing, grinding, writhing together. Justin's normally a cinch to find - you only have to look for a shock of blondeness. But he's not where he was. Where were we, though? Was it by the bar or closer to the sound booth?

I think I hear him call my name, but the _thumpa thumpa_ is deafening and whatever I hear is only very faint. The bodies sway and slide all around me. I hear that faint cry again, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Something curls up in the pit of my stomach.

The crowd doesn't exactly part, but there's a huddled mass in the middle of the dance floor. They're crouched over a little, crowded around something. That's where the cries are coming from. I bolt towards them.

"Fuck, he's really done for," shouts one guy. I shove him out of the way and there's Justin.

He's half on the floor, but there are a few guys holding him up. That's not the first thing I see though. The first thing I see is his fringe falling away from his face, revealing his eyes. They're rolled back in his head; only the whites are showing. His mouth is slack and he's gagging, drooling, his breath rolling in and out in shallow gasps.

I scream his name. The guys holding him look at me and start rushing out explanations:

"He fainted-"

"He started shaking and went all white-"

"Did he take something? What did he take?"

"Call a fucking ambulance!" I scream, launching myself towards them. They help Justin into my arms, and he lands there in a limp mess of lifeless limbs.

The crowd starts to clear around us. At least three men have their phones out and are calling 911. One tells others to start calling; "The more calls, the faster they get here!"

That sounds like an awful lot of bullshit, but who the fuck am I to argue? The club is buzzing with men whipping out their phones, trying to help us. I focus on Justin, but he's not responding to anything. 

"An ambulance is on its way," someone says. "It'll be here soon."

Soon isn't good enough, not when Justin is lying in a heap in my arms, his arms dangling by his sides, his white eyes staring up at the distant ceiling. I hear the thwack of the bat. I remember the blood and dirt all over his face. I say his name again and again, but he can't hear me.

Someone screams "no", they keep screaming it, like some kind of fucking wounded animal, and it's only when someone starts rubbing my back soothingly that I realise it's me.

*

As luck would have it, Jennifer is halfway across the Atlantic when Justin is taken to hospital. She's on her way to Europe with Molly, won't touch down for hours yet, and her son might be dying. Justin needs her. I need her. I sink into the stiff hospital chair and wait, wait, wait, remembering doing this before, remembering being frightened and devastated, and feeling all of that coming back in waves that threaten to envelop me whole.

When they finally come to get me, and let me in to see him, I try to tell myself, _it's all going to be okay._ But it isn't. He's lying in the bed with tubes coming out of him, his face ashen and his eyes closed. He looks like death. I feel like it.

The doctors reassure me that he will be okay, that he was lucky, but it does nothing for me.

When he wakes up, I'll know that he's okay.

When he wakes up, I'll know that we've been lucky.

But right now he's unconscious in a labyrinth of tubes, and he doesn't look like my Justin. I barely recognise him at all.

*

He wakes up the following morning, and it's then that I know we've been lucky. The doctor talks quietly to him as the nurse removes some of the tubes. They warn him about the dangers of illicit substances. They tell him he's going to need bed-rest for a few days, and he'll need to be careful after that. Justin listens, nodding and murmuring agreement, but his eyes stay fixed on me. I slouch down in my chair, wishing the far corner of his room would swallow me whole.

I fed him that goddamned pill.

When the doctor and nurse leave, Justin smiles and pats the side of his bed. It's not his smile. His face is still grey and his eyes are bleak and tired. There's not a hint of sunshine anywhere in this room.

I haul myself up and wander over to him, trying to find my legs, trying to make sure they don't buckle underneath me. I don't sit on the bed, like he'd like me to. I sit down in the chair right next to him and take his hands in mine.

"It's okay," he says, stroking my wrists with his thumbs. His voice is hoarse and worn, probably from all those hideous tubes. "I'm okay."

I don't look at him. I kiss his knuckles and press my face to his palm. He stretches his fingers through my hair and strokes it lightly.

"I'm okay," he says again, in a whisper. "Brian, look at me, I'm okay."

I look at him, and apologise. And apologise. And apologise. He tries to stop me, but I fed him that goddamned pill. I fed him his first one, back at Babylon a million fucking years ago, and I fed him the one last night that almost killed him. He keeps telling me he's okay, but what if he weren't?

I lean in, wrap my arms around his waist, and bury my face in his chest. Justin knots his hands through my hair and holds me close. He whispers it over and over: "I'm okay." When I start to cry, his voice cracks. He sounds scared. I don't blame him. I'm fucking terrified, it's only fair that he's afraid as well.

*

Apparently back 'home', as Deb still insists on calling it (exactly how fucking long do Justin and I have to stay in New York until she realises _this_ is our home?!), there's still legend of Brian Kinney. _The_ Brian Kinney. Brian Kinney, the hottest stud in all of Pittsburgh. Brian Kinney, who fucks, sucks, rims, rams. Brian Kinney, immortal club boy. Brian Kinney, eternally young and eternally beautiful.

I wonder what they'd say if they could see me hunched over my husband, crying uncontrollably and shaking like a goddamned leaf. I'm not their legendary stud anymore. I'm forty-fucking-three. I don't want to fuck or suck or rim or ram, and I don't want my pick of the other club boys. I want to take my husband home and just **be** with him. I want to forget the _thwack_ , the blood, the dirt, the smoke, the whites of his eyes, the way he sagged in my arms, the weak rasp of his breath as it nearly petered out.

I'll take the immortality, though, just so long as I can share it with him. I am never going to be ready to face my death or his; the thought of either, but especially the latter, petrify me.

"Bri?"

I lift my head to look at him. Justin smiles, sweet and sunny. It's not quite what it should be (like his smile at prom, the one I still think about thirteen years later, the calm before the storm), but it sparks something inside of me. I kiss him, as gently as I can manage. I'd like to grab him and crush him to me, tangling us together. I'd like to take him home and throw him on the nearest available surface and celebrate how fucking goddamned fortunate we both are, that he's alive and well.

"I'm okay," he says, brushing my hair out of my face, wiping my tears away.

"You've only said it a thousand fucking times now," I snark. It's half-hearted and comes out shaky, but Justin laughs nonetheless. The room gets a little brighter.

"Are you?"

I look at him and wonder what he sees when he looks back. A fucking mess, probably. A fucking nightmare. A fucking shadow of who I used to be. He has to know I'm not okay, but maybe he needs to hear it from me. Like when we're apart and his absence creeps under my skin and _pinches_ at me. I'm not as unsure as I once was, I know he's coming home, I know he's not leaving me behind for better things. I'm always left knowing he loves me, but that's never the same as hearing it.

But I don't know how to tell him what I am right now. I'm more scared than I've ever been. The weight of what has happened is sitting on my chest. If it weren't for his soft smile and bright eyes (growing brighter by the minute, thank fuck), I'd be drowning. Suffocating. Losing my goddamned mind. I don't know how to tell him: _if I lost you, it would all be over._ If you'd died last night, I probably would have gone and thrown myself off the roof or a bridge or a subway platform. I said something like that to him once, and he'd reminded me of Gus, as though our son should be reason enough to go on. But why the fuck would I want Gus growing up with whatever I would become?

"Brian?" Justin traces his fingers around my jawline, behind my ear, sifting them through my hair again. "Are you okay?"

I close my eyes, focusing on how his touch feels. "Do I look okay?"

He pulls himself closer to me and kisses me. When his lips leave mine, I open my eyes. Tears spill out, and I hate myself for it. Justin presses his forehead to mine and whispers, "You look beautiful."

"You're a fucking liar," I mutter, scowling at him.

"Am not," he laughs. "You're gorgeous."

I grumble and bury my head against his shoulder, but as soon as my face is hidden, I smile. Justin hugs me close. He tells me he loves me. I say it back, in a rushed mumble that lands on his shoulder. I look up just in time to see him smiling, just like he did on prom night, just like he did when we got married, if not brighter.

Now I really believe it: we're going to be okay. We were lucky this time, and if I have my way, there won't be another. Tomorrow, I'll take him home. Tomorrow, I'll tell him that we're done with pills. Tomorrow, I'll remind him that I'm forty-fucking-three and he's thirty-fucking-one and there's no point pretending otherwise. Tomorrow, I'll call Jennifer and beg her forgiveness. Tomorrow, I'll look after him and hold him close and check his heartbeat every five minutes, just to be sure it's still there and he's still with me.

Right now, I'm going to sink into my husband's embrace and tell him how fucking sorry I am, and I'll kiss him to shut him up when he says I shouldn't be sorry, and I'll tell him that I know better, I always do, and he'll laugh, and then I'll tell him that I love him more than it ought to be possible, because the words are just about ready to burst from me, and because I know he can never hear them enough. I'll watch him smile, and I'll memorise it, because if there's one sure-fire antidote to the _thwack_ , the blood, the dirt, the smoke, the whitened eyes, the scent of death that I _never_ want touching him, it's that little bit of sunshine.


End file.
